Here is what I thought a good summary of how the energy market in Australia has got itself in a *real knot*, due to decisions made within/by/for the Australian energy market itself!

Unfortunately, the losers include all of us - prices of electricity and gas will rise. There is some saving grace in the measure of price stability that big wind and solar generation will give us, ie prices could be more volatile without them.

This article highlights a few things: How low SA power usage has gone; How low it is forecast to go by the national Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO); How SA is a now a world leader(!) in the ratio of Renewable Energy to non-renewable energy usage; AND the speed with which the *change* of this ratio is occurring.

The AEMO are the folk who are charged with running the *artificial* energy market system Australia - and they seem to be in a difficult spot at present with solar, wind and energy efficient plant and appliances, all *severely* reducing, in a very quick way, the nice forecasts of rising power demand they made for the coal and gas people.

Scrapping or winding back Australia’s Renewable Energy Target would lead to significant increases in electricity prices, while delivering a windfall profit to power companies of as much as $70 billion, according to new analysis from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

I was cold-called the other day to see if I was interested in having solar installed for *FREE*!

Now, being in the solar game for 14 years, and never having encountered a true 'free lunch' yet, I thought I would just ask a few questions and get some idea of how this offer would work. It seems that, yes, the solar truly is installed for *FREE*!, but you then pay for the 'solar electricity you use' at a reduced rate.

Any new technology comes about for good reasons - folk won't buy if it does not deliver.

The question of concern here is - will it deliver for our market, and the signs we've seen so far give us doubts. Now that's not to say that these doubts can't be cleared up, its just that we are not getting the answers we would have thought.

Solar on more than 2 million roofs – More than 2 million solar installations have been supported by the Renewable Energy Target as of 31 January 2014 – 1,176,000 solar PV systems and 845,000 solar hot water systems. This means that 24 per cent of the 8.4 million occupied private dwellings in Australia have a solar system.